


It's All So Fast (until it slows)

by DeerstalkerDeathFrisbee



Series: Can't Catch Lightning [1]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Anxiety, Gen, Hunk (Voltron) Has Anxiety, Keith (Voltron) is a Good Boyfriend, Keith (Voltron) is a Good Friend, Keith is Emo Luna Lovegood, M/M, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-13
Updated: 2018-07-13
Packaged: 2019-06-09 16:50:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,674
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15271944
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DeerstalkerDeathFrisbee/pseuds/DeerstalkerDeathFrisbee
Summary: Keith tips his head to the side, “Bad day?”“Yeah.” Hunk shrugs, “Sometimes they happen.”“You just wake up feeling shitty?”“Yeah,”“That sucks.”“Yeah.” Hunk’s tired of saying that word.“You want a hug?” Keith offers.Hunk has a Bad Anxiety Day, Keith wants to help.





	It's All So Fast (until it slows)

**Author's Note:**

> MORE RARE PAIR. If you follow me on Tumblr, you probably know I'm protesting all the Vld fandom negativity by writing wholesome rare pair fic. This is fic 3 in my ongoing list of AUs and pairings I want to write.
> 
> Warning, description of a Bad Anxiety Day, based on my personal experience. This is not a true vent-fic, but I did have a really tough mental health day a few days ago and this is part of me processing.
> 
> This is also part of a bigger AU I want to toy with a bit where Hunk is a football playing sweetheart and Keith is the high school equivalent of Emo Luna Lovegood.

**It’s All So Fast (until is slows) ‘People Change’ by Mipso**

            Hunk’s having a bad day.

            He opened his eyes this morning to his bones vibrating. The feeling of thin, live wires spreading out beneath his skin, a net to catch him in, to tangle him up. His stomach’s in knots and his chest feels heavy. It’s not going to be an easy day. He blinks his eyes and they feel swollen, lids heavy and tacky like salt’s been sneaking out while he’s sleeping. He doesn’t get nightmares, never has. He stress-dreams and that’s almost worse. To wake up not afraid, but feeling like you’ve failed something you can’t even remember doing.

            He’d talked to Keith about it once, sitting on the bleachers at school, high up where the wind tangled Keith’s hair, fluttering the faded purple highlights. Looking up at his friend (but they could be more, maybe they’re halfway to being more?) Hunk thought hazily that with his violet-white highlights and blue-black hair, backlit by the fading sun, Keith had looked not of this earth. Alien, like he belonged to the sky.

            “My bad dreams don’t scare me,” Keith had said definitively after a long moment of thought, “I just wake up feeling empty after them and I think that’s worse. I like the dreams where I’m fighting something.”

            “Seriously?” Hunk had said, surprised and a little concerned.

            Keith had given him a little close-mouthed smile, lopsided with soft eyes. “Well, yeah. If I’m fighting I’m living. I’m on an adventure.”

            Hunk had shook his head, “You’re crazy, man.”

            Keith’s grin had widened and sharpened, but not with the intent to cut. Keith didn’t use his sharp teeth on Hunk, never had, really. Keith only sharpened his claws on people who provoked him. “Never said I wasn’t.”

            Hunk doesn’t know if his eyes leak saltwater when he stress-dreams. He’s never had the heart to check and see if his pillow was wet.

            His muscles ache and his face feels numb and tingly and it’s not going to be a good day. But that’s okay, he’s okay.

            His younger sisters are chasing each other around the living room and his older sister looks exhausted and pissed off in equal measure, holding her son close to her chest as he wails while chunks of dark hair falls out of her messy bun in sad tangles.

            “Hunk!” she brightens when she sees him, “Can you - ?”

            He nods, a smile cracking his face open. He imagines powdered flakes of plaster sloughing off at the gesture like his skin has turned into a dried-out face mask, the goopy green kind Lance likes so much and Keith practically crab-walks away from hissing because _“Bad Textures, Lance, get that shit away from me!”_

            “No problem!” he says, watching as Hana’s shoulders slump in obvious relief as she retreats to her bedroom to deal with his crying nephew.

            “Dad’s still asleep from work,” she says over her shoulder as she retreats, “Try to get the monsters to quiet down for him.”

            “No problem,” the mask is cracking. He needs to start on breakfast, turn away so her sharp eyes, dulled by exhaustion, don’t catch the lie.

            “Lea, Leila, breakfast,” Hunk tells the squabbling girls, turning away and tuning them out as best he can as he begins cracking eggs into the pan. He can do scrambled eggs. His feet are tingling now instead of his face and the sense of slighter vertigo is all around him like a cushion of malignant atmosphere, but he can make scrambled eyes blindfolded with one hand tied behind his back.

            Lea gets the orange juice, Leila gets the toast going in the toaster and they manage to have something resembling a good, filling breakfast.

            Hunk thinks of Keith again. Keith’s on his mind a lot these days, haunting him like an angel on his shoulder, providing running commentary.

            _“Like I’d ever give good advice. I’m a shoulder devil if anything,”_ his mental Keith tells him with a dry, crooked smile and he rolls his eyes to dislodge the thought.

            His mental Lance agrees with mental Keith’s assessment, but only jokingly, ruffling mental-Keith’s highlighted hair and calling it a mullet even though it’s clearly not.

            It might have something to do with the way Keith’s Keith-ness has begun to slowly invade his life, Hunk reflects as he packs his bag for school after breakfast. He reaches into one of his backpack pockets and finds one of Keith’s paperclip sculptures, this one embellished with metal bottle caps and bits of bicycle chain. He stuffs his homework into a notebook with numb fingers and find one of Keith’s hand-drawn star charts with his own made-up constellations.  Instead of notes he finds a string of doodles from Keith’s pen, little fantastical creatures found nowhere but Keith’s imagination, and now Hunk’s notes.

            Keith is following him wherever he goes. It feels like a gift in its way. He thinks of earlier this year, when Keith Kogane was just the boy with the locker below his. Castleton High’s very own ‘emo Luna Lovegood’ with his thrift-store-chic fashion sense, black sharpie doodles up and down his arms (and legs in the summer), and backpack stuffed with old copies of Popular Mechanics, sort-of stolen library books, nuts, bolts, and the occasional screwdriver (of the shop variety, not the alcoholic version).

            Hunk’s still got that buzzing beneath his skin, and his bones are vibrating. He shoves the rest of his school things into his backpack, ignoring the way some of the pages crumple and the notebooks twist.

            Downstairs Lea and Leila are clattering, gearing up for another day of elementary school. He’s glad Hana needs his car today. He’s glad his little sisters will be taking the bus. He shouldn’t be behind the wheel. But the thought of being shoved into a ‘big yellow sardine can on wheels’ as Keith calls it, makes his skin crawl.

            It’s okay. It’s okay. It’s okay.

            He pulls the little paperclip sculpture out of his backpack and holds it in his hand. He’s not sure what it’s supposed to be. Maybe it’s half-finished. Maybe it’s one of Keith’s abandoned projects.

            “A work of art is never finished, it is but abandoned.”

            That was a quote from something, wasn’t it?

            Hunk’s not sure, but his brain’s spinning around it now, words flying out and back in again like a carnival ride. One of those vomitron things that doesn’t go in perfect circles, more like some kind of ellipsoidal orbit or something. Is that the right word? He’s not sure.

            The bus to school feels like it takes a century.

            The bus to school feels like a blink.

            Hunk drifts through school. He smiles and feels pieces of his face crack and split and flake away. He feels eyes on him and when he turns to look, Lance and Pidge are quickly glancing away, awkward now that the observers have become the observed. They don’t want him to know they’re worried, or something. Or they know. They know he’s splitting open like an over-ripe melon.

            Keith’s the only one who doesn’t look away. His eyes, grey-purple like thunderheads gaze steadily into Hunk’s own. Hunk stares at him, not understanding. Why does Keith look at him like that? What’s in his head? What’s he thinking? Hunk’s heart thuds against his ribs, demanding to know what’s behind Keith’s steady gaze.

            “You okay, man?” Lance asks, practically bouncing on his toes, Hunk’s nerves feeding into his own overflowing well of restless energy until they’re both ready to explode with it.

            “Fine,” Hunk lies.

            Lance knows it’s a lie, and Pidge, who’s standing at his shoulder, knows too and they look at him with eyes that _know_ things and it’s almost enough to make him run and hide. Except he feels too big and too small for his body all at once and he’s not sure how he’d pull that off without falling on his face.

            Pidge is his saving grace, “Okay, we’re here if you wanna talk or anything. Sit in silence? Play ‘who would win in a fight’. You know, whatever.”

            “I’m still saying a shark would beat a hippo.”

            “And I’m still saying fight Keith, not me, I don’t care about your hippo-vs-shark nonsense. I am Switzerland. And by that I mean I have all the money and all the science and I don’t give a fuck about your petty affairs.”

            Hunk cracks a smile and it’s genuine because he can feel like his insides are shaking but his friends are still his friends and they’re pretty wonderful.

            “Thanks guys,” he says and they give him smiles that don’t quite understand, but come as close as they can.

            Keith finds him on the bleachers at lunch. High up, because Hunk may be a ground-dweller, unlike Keith with his fine bird-like bones and fluttering pre-dark hair, but when he feels like this, he either has to reach for the sky or burrow deep into the ground. And under the bleachers is for quickies and stoners. If anyone was ever brave enough to run a black light over that stretch of dirt he’s pretty sure they’re find enough DNA for a crime scene.

            The wind’s combing through Hunk’s hair and there’s a rushing in his ears. He wants to cover them up but the rushing is from inside of him and you can’t shut your insides out.

            It’s a strange reversal of the last time they were up here. Hunk’s on the highest row and Keith’s standing one below him, looking up. The only difference is Keith’s hair is streaked with orange now, the highlights starting redder and fading out to a yellow-gold, like tongues of flame running over his head. Sunset hair.

            His earring today is made out of one of those square plastic things some companies use to keep plastic bags of bread closed. It’s got a hole punched through the middle and it’s threaded onto a thin wire hoop with a bunch of multicolored plastic beads like you’d find in a kid’s friendship bracelet making kit. The bread tag bounces against Keith’s jaw and Hunk wonders how that isn’t extremely uncomfortable. Keith must have gotten bored in math this morning because he’s ‘painted’ his nails with red, green, and black Sharpie and there are designs twisting up his right forearm that start as formulas but rapidly devolve into nonsense squiggles. A secret language only meant for Keith to understand. He’s wearing a denim jacket that looks like someone assaulted it with a Bedazzler, then covered the poor thing in patches for obscure bands and forgotten pop culture references. His shirt underneath it is one of those t-shirts that’s been worn so long whatever design on the front has nearly completely faded and the grey fabric is soft as a warm cup of cocoa on a cold day.

            Hunk kind of wants to touch the t-shirt, the spot right over Keith’s heart where he can almost but not quite make out the shape of an 80s cartoon character. Is that a Power Ranger? Hunk wouldn’t put it past Keith to wear old Power Rangers memorabilia for no good reason.

            Hunk kind of wants to run his palm over the ridges of rhinestones across Keith’s shoulders, to feel the rough texture and know he’s still here even when his head doesn’t feel like his home.

            Keith tips his head to the side like a bird. Or a dog asking a question with no answer. “Bad day?”

            “Yeah.” Hunk shrugs, “Sometimes they happen.”

            “You just wake up feeling shitty?”

            “Yeah,” Hunk can feel his lips turning downwards, seeking the ground where he belongs.

            “That sucks.”

            “Yeah.” Hunk’s tired of saying that word.

            Keith looks at him. He just…looks. Hunk feels weird, a kind of tingly sensation in his chest like there’s some kind of invisible laser in Keith’s gaze. Or a wave. Like a microwave. Something invisible that shakes up all your atoms anyway.

            “You want a hug?” Keith offers.

            Hunk stares. “Seriously?”

            Keith hunches his shoulders up toward his ears, rhinestones jarring his homemade earring. “I dunno. Sometimes when I feel shitty pressure helps. But sometimes being touched by a person makes it worse.”

            “What do you do?” Hunk is wondering what touching and being touched by the rhinestone jacket and super-soft-maybe-Power-Rangers t-shirt would feel like. Paired with Keith’s lean, strong arms. Probably pretty good. “What do you do when you don’t want anyone to touch you?”

            “Find someone who I don’t mind touching or…” Keith squints down at his worn black converses with the bright red laces, “You’re gonna laugh.”

            “No, no,” Hunk tries to reassure him but Keith shakes his head ‘no’, a small smile tugging at his lips.

            “A good kind of laughing, promise.”

            “Ok.”

            Keith drags in a breath like he’s smoking a cigarette made of oxygen, “I climb in a cabinet or…a closet.”

            It takes Hunk a moment to clue into the joke, a moment of Keith with his eyebrows slightly tipped up, waiting patiently for him to catch on. A laugh rips out of Hunk’s chest at the realization.

            “You…go back in the closet?”

            Keith nods, a little smile on his face like Hunk just won a prize and he’s proud of him for doing it. “I like how the coats feel pressed around me.”

            Hunk can see that. His face is tingling and the world feels like it’s coming at him at a slant, not right, not all there. His head’s whirling, this conversation is just a tiny corner he’s managed to carve out of the chaos.

            But Keith’s funny. And he’s trying.

            “I’ll take that hug if you’re offering.”

            Hunk knows he’s the hugger not really the hug-ee in their group of friends. On the football team hugs tend to be one-armed casual affairs or massive dogpiles depending on the mood. They’re a tactile bunch, they play a sport that demands it to a certain extent. But with his other friends Hunk’s the giant wrapping an about-to-fidget-his-way-out-of-his-skin Lance in a tight embrace, or picking Pidge up in an abrupt bear hug, or even folding Keith into his arms when Keith says it’s okay.

            He’s the one who hugs.

            But Keith’s arms are lean lines of muscle around his broad shoulders, his jacket’s weird rhinestone extravaganza a strange, grounding scrape against his cheek when Hunk realizes oh yeah, this is happening and drops his head down to rest on Keith’s shoulder. He gently sets his hands on Keith’s shoulder blades (and the other boy’s bones always look so slender, fragile, like a bird of prey about to take flight, but they feel sturdy and immovable under Hunk’s hands right now) “Is this ok?”

            “Yeah, hug away big guy.”

            And Hunk wraps his arms around Keith and they just…hold on. Together. It shouldn’t be comfortable, Hunk is leaning down and Keith is reaching up, but the slight discomfort is part of what makes it feel real.

            “You wanna play hooky the rest of the day?” Keith offers after an immeasurable amount of time has passed.

            “You know you aren’t just going to magic away my bad day, right?” Hunk reminds him. No matter how strong and sure Keith feels against his chest, hearts beating just slightly off-rhythm, but together, together, together, no person, no matter how beautiful, how salty-sweet, how almost-his, can stop the whirlwind in his head. It can only sort itself out, no matter how many times he demands it settle.

            “Yeah, I know. But I can help you not hate today so much. Get you out of your head for a little while.”

            Hunk thinks about it. It’s not magic cure. Today’s a Bad Day. But he knows that, and Keith knows that. And there could be worse ways to spend a bad day than with Keith and his bread-tag earring and Sharpie arm art.

            “Let’s play hooky,” he hears himself agreeing and Keith’s arms around his back tighten just a little.

            “Sounds like a plan, big guy.”

**Author's Note:**

> Fic title from the song 'People Change' by Mipso which has a super soothing sound to it but the lyrics are low-key depressing? 
> 
> LET ME KNOW IF YOU WANT TO SEE MORE OF THIS AU.  
> *because you might see more of it anyway, I am a chaos muppet who does not play by the rules.


End file.
